First of all, the "comic strip" that attracted me to Stubbe Peeter is bound at the front of the octavo, and folded once lengthwise, twice widthwise, in order to enclose it in the new binding from the BL. The BL has stamped the "comic strip" of Stubbe Peeter once, between the 7th and 8th panels, but more importantly, the strip has a light mis-impression over the first four frames. It's a mirror reflection of the first four panels, which thematically suggests a kind of inversion, a topsy-turvy world implicit in Stubbe Peeter's witchcraft. But bibliographically, I think this suggests that the block was first impressed at the center of the sheet, rotated 180 degrees and re-placed at the edge of the sheet, where it was re-pressed more firmly and cut away from the other side of the sheet.
It's been a while since I worked on interpreting signatures, but I'm pretty sure that the comic strip was designed to have been tipped in, because the first (blank) leaf bears signature A on the recto and on the verso, a faint trace of the reversed text from the title page: "A true Diſcourſe.| Declaring the damnable life".
The contents are relatively straightforward. It begins with an exordium commending all readers to reject the example of Stubbe Peeter and follow God instead, followed a description of Stubbe Peeter's early years. Stubbe Peeter is accused of being the son of Satan. He grew up near Cologne (here, "Collin"), where he learned "of wicked Artes even from twelve yeers of age till twentye," including the power to transform himself into a wolf. As a wolf, Stubbe Peeter learned the pleasure of killing and eating men. He terrorized the Germans for twenty-five years until, one day, he tried to kill and eat some children. God made it impossible for Stubbe Peeter to bite a child's collar, so the children were able to cry for help. We know this is true because Master "Tice Artine, a Brewer, dwelling at Puddle-wharfe, in London... is naere kinſman to this Childe..." The Germans tried for a great amount of time to entrap the wolf, which they eventually did by the Grace of God. When captured, Stubbe Peeter switched into his human form, "but the hunters whoſe eyeswas ſedfaſtly bent v-pon the beaſt, and ſeeing him in the ſame place metamorphoſed contrary to their ex-pectation: it wroght a wonderfull amazement in their minds..." so they had to bring him before the Magistrate. Stubbe Peeter confessed to the whole thing under torture, and admitted that he had the power to transform thanks to a girdle he got from the Devil. The punishment? "Stubbe Peeter as principal mallefactor, was iudged firſt to have his body laide on a wheele, and with red hotte burning pincers in ten ſeveral places to have the fleſh puld off from the bones, after that, his legges and Armes to be broken with a wooden Are or Ratchet, afterward to have his head ſtruck from his body, then to have his carkaſſe burnde to Ashes. Also his Daughter and his Gossip were iudged to be burned quick to Ashes, the ſame time and day with the carkaſſse of the aforesaid Stubbe Peeter," the 31st of October.
The cartoon, preceding, depicts events from this narrative in eight frames. In the first frame, Stubbe Peeter transforms into a wolf-man, above, and attacks a man as a wolf, below. In the second frame, the wolf is pursued by a man on horseback, two men on foot, and a dog. In the third frame, Stubbe Peeter is captured in the form of a man with a walking stick--as if to indicate that he were taking an innocent walk in the country--but the dog knows the contrary is true. In the fourth frame Stubbe Peeter stands before the magistrate. In the fifth Stubbe Peeter is nude on a wheel as a man strips the flesh from his breast with hot tongs. In the sixth, another man raises an axe onto the visibly tortured Stubbe Peeter. In the seventh, a man on the opposite side uses a sword to slice off the head of Stubbe Peeter, now blindfolded, with a strange display in the background. Behind all of this is a fence with a head and a wolf mounted on the tallest pike. In the eighth, a headless corpse burns on a stake between two women, also on stakes.
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